DESCRIPTION

Zsh is a UNIX command interpreter (shell) usable as an interactive login shell and as a
shell script command processor. Of the standard shells, zsh most closely resembles ksh
but includes many enhancements. Zsh has command line editing, builtin spelling
correction, programmable command completion, shell functions (with autoloading), a history
mechanism, and a host of other features.

AUTHOR

Zsh was originally written by Paul Falstad <pf@zsh.org>. Zsh is now maintained by the
members of the zsh-workers mailing list <zsh-workers@zsh.org>. The development is
currently coordinated by Peter Stephenson <pws@zsh.org>. The coordinator can be contacted
at <coordinator@zsh.org>, but matters relating to the code should generally go to the
mailing list.

THEZSHFAQ

Zsh has a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), maintained by Peter Stephenson
<pws@zsh.org>. It is regularly posted to the newsgroup comp.unix.shell and the
zsh-announce mailing list. The latest version can be found at any of the Zsh FTP sites,
or at http://www.zsh.org/FAQ/. The contact address for FAQ-related matters is
<faqmaster@zsh.org>.

THEZSHUSERGUIDE

A userguide is currently in preparation. It is intended to complement the manual, with
explanations and hints on issues where the manual can be cabbalistic, hierographic, or
downright mystifying (for example, the word `hierographic' does not exist). It can be
viewed in its current state at http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Guide/. At the time of writing,
chapters dealing with startup files and their contents and the new completion system were
essentially complete.

THEZSHWIKI

A `wiki' website for zsh has been created at http://www.zshwiki.org/. This is a site
which can be added to and modified directly by users without any special permission. You
can add your own zsh tips and configurations.

INVOCATION

The following flags are interpreted by the shell when invoked to determine where the shell
will read commands from:
-c Take the first argument as a command to execute, rather than reading commands from
a script or standard input. If any further arguments are given, the first one is
assigned to $0, rather than being used as a positional parameter.
-i Force shell to be interactive. It is still possible to specify a script to
execute.
-s Force shell to read commands from the standard input. If the -s flag is not
present and an argument is given, the first argument is taken to be the pathname of
a script to execute.
If there are any remaining arguments after option processing, and neither of the options
-c or -s was supplied, the first argument is taken as the file name of a script containing
shell commands to be executed. If the option PATH_SCRIPT is set, and the file name does
not contain a directory path (i.e. there is no `/' in the name), first the current
directory and then the command path given by the variable PATH are searched for the
script. If the option is not set or the file name contains a `/' it is used directly.
After the first one or two arguments have been appropriated as described above, the
remaining arguments are assigned to the positional parameters.
For further options, which are common to invocation and the set builtin, see
zshoptions(1).
Options may be specified by name using the -o option. -o acts like a single-letter
option, but takes a following string as the option name. For example,
zsh-x-oshwordsplitscr
runs the script scr, setting the XTRACE option by the corresponding letter `-x' and the
SH_WORD_SPLIT option by name. Options may be turned off by name by using +o instead of
-o. -o can be stacked up with preceding single-letter options, so for example `-xoshwordsplit' or `-xoshwordsplit' is equivalent to `-x-oshwordsplit'.
Options may also be specified by name in GNU long option style, `--option-name'. When
this is done, `-' characters in the option name are permitted: they are translated into
`_', and thus ignored. So, for example, `zsh--sh-word-split' invokes zsh with the
SH_WORD_SPLIT option turned on. Like other option syntaxes, options can be turned off by
replacing the initial `-' with a `+'; thus `+-sh-word-split' is equivalent to
`--no-sh-word-split'. Unlike other option syntaxes, GNU-style long options cannot be
stacked with any other options, so for example `-x-shwordsplit' is an error, rather than
being treated like `-x--shwordsplit'.
The special GNU-style option `--version' is handled; it sends to standard output the
shell's version information, then exits successfully. `--help' is also handled; it sends
to standard output a list of options that can be used when invoking the shell, then exits
successfully.
Option processing may be finished, allowing following arguments that start with `-' or `+'
to be treated as normal arguments, in two ways. Firstly, a lone `-' (or `+') as an
argument by itself ends option processing. Secondly, a special option `--' (or `+-'),
which may be specified on its own (which is the standard POSIX usage) or may be stacked
with preceding options (so `-x-' is equivalent to `-x--'). Options are not permitted to
be stacked after `--' (so `-x-f' is an error), but note the GNU-style option form
discussed above, where `--shwordsplit' is permitted and does not end option processing.
Except when the sh/ksh emulation single-letter options are in effect, the option `-b' (or
`+b') ends option processing. `-b' is like `--', except that further single-letter
options can be stacked after the `-b' and will take effect as normal.

COMPATIBILITY

Zsh tries to emulate sh or ksh when it is invoked as sh or ksh respectively; more
precisely, it looks at the first letter of the name by which it was invoked, excluding any
initial `r' (assumed to stand for `restricted'), and if that is `b', `s' or `k' it will
emulate sh or ksh. Furthermore, if invoked as su (which happens on certain systems when
the shell is executed by the su command), the shell will try to find an alternative name
from the SHELL environment variable and perform emulation based on that.
In sh and ksh compatibility modes the following parameters are not special and not
initialized by the shell: ARGC, argv, cdpath, fignore, fpath, HISTCHARS, mailpath,
MANPATH, manpath, path, prompt, PROMPT, PROMPT2, PROMPT3, PROMPT4, psvar, status, watch.
The usual zsh startup/shutdown scripts are not executed. Login shells source /etc/profile
followed by $HOME/.profile. If the ENV environment variable is set on invocation, $ENV is
sourced after the profile scripts. The value of ENV is subjected to parameter expansion,
command substitution, and arithmetic expansion before being interpreted as a pathname.
Note that the PRIVILEGED option also affects the execution of startup files.
The following options are set if the shell is invoked as sh or ksh: NO_BAD_PATTERN,
NO_BANG_HIST, NO_BG_NICE, NO_EQUALS, NO_FUNCTION_ARGZERO, GLOB_SUBST, NO_GLOBAL_EXPORT,
NO_HUP, INTERACTIVE_COMMENTS, KSH_ARRAYS, NO_MULTIOS, NO_NOMATCH, NO_NOTIFY,
POSIX_BUILTINS, NO_PROMPT_PERCENT, RM_STAR_SILENT, SH_FILE_EXPANSION, SH_GLOB,
SH_OPTION_LETTERS, SH_WORD_SPLIT. Additionally the BSD_ECHO and IGNORE_BRACES options are
set if zsh is invoked as sh. Also, the KSH_OPTION_PRINT, LOCAL_OPTIONS, PROMPT_BANG,
PROMPT_SUBST and SINGLE_LINE_ZLE options are set if zsh is invoked as ksh.

RESTRICTEDSHELL

When the basename of the command used to invoke zsh starts with the letter `r' or the `-r'
command line option is supplied at invocation, the shell becomes restricted. Emulation
mode is determined after stripping the letter `r' from the invocation name. The following
are disabled in restricted mode:
· changing directories with the cd builtin
· changing or unsetting the PATH, path, MODULE_PATH, module_path, SHELL, HISTFILE,
HISTSIZE, GID, EGID, UID, EUID, USERNAME, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, LD_AOUT_LIBRARY_PATH,
LD_PRELOAD and LD_AOUT_PRELOAD parameters
· specifying command names containing /
· specifying command pathnames using hash
· redirecting output to files
· using the exec builtin command to replace the shell with another command
· using jobs-Z to overwrite the shell process' argument and environment space
· using the ARGV0 parameter to override argv[0] for external commands
· turning off restricted mode with set+r or unsetoptRESTRICTED
These restrictions are enforced after processing the startup files. The startup files
should set up PATH to point to a directory of commands which can be safely invoked in the
restricted environment. They may also add further restrictions by disabling selected
builtins.
Restricted mode can also be activated any time by setting the RESTRICTED option. This
immediately enables all the restrictions described above even if the shell still has not
processed all startup files.

STARTUP/SHUTDOWNFILES

Commands are first read from /etc/zshenv; this cannot be overridden. Subsequent behaviour
is modified by the RCS and GLOBAL_RCS options; the former affects all startup files, while
the second only affects global startup files (those shown here with an path starting with
a /). If one of the options is unset at any point, any subsequent startup file(s) of the
corresponding type will not be read. It is also possible for a file in $ZDOTDIR to
re-enable GLOBAL_RCS. Both RCS and GLOBAL_RCS are set by default.
Commands are then read from $ZDOTDIR/.zshenv. If the shell is a login shell, commands are
read from /etc/zprofile and then $ZDOTDIR/.zprofile. Then, if the shell is interactive,
commands are read from /etc/zshrc and then $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc. Finally, if the shell is a
login shell, /etc/zlogin and $ZDOTDIR/.zlogin are read.
When a login shell exits, the files $ZDOTDIR/.zlogout and then /etc/zlogout are read.
This happens with either an explicit exit via the exit or logout commands, or an implicit
exit by reading end-of-file from the terminal. However, if the shell terminates due to
exec'ing another process, the logout files are not read. These are also affected by the
RCS and GLOBAL_RCS options. Note also that the RCS option affects the saving of history
files, i.e. if RCS is unset when the shell exits, no history file will be saved.
If ZDOTDIR is unset, HOME is used instead. Files listed above as being in /etc may be in
another directory, depending on the installation.
As /etc/zshenv is run for all instances of zsh, it is important that it be kept as small
as possible. In particular, it is a good idea to put code that does not need to be run
for every single shell behind a test of the form `if[[-orcs]];then...' so that it
will not be executed when zsh is invoked with the `-f' option.
Any of these files may be pre-compiled with the zcompile builtin command (see
zshbuiltins(1)). If a compiled file exists (named for the original file plus the .zwc
extension) and it is newer than the original file, the compiled file will be used instead.